


time is never new in this world

by cartographicalspine



Series: refuge for a flock [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Introspection, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 12:16:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17560232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: Merrill finds a kind, hopeful ending after all is said and done.





	time is never new in this world

**Author's Note:**

> A rambling, idealized postscript on the story, because I wanted more kindness for everyone, especially Merrill. Mind the tags.

Merrill looks up at the sharp sound of the door slamming open, watches people spill in, the glow of alcohol and of joy in their eyes respectively, and smiles as the sound in the room rises. Somewhere, Isabela’s golden laughter carries over the din, and Fenris is in the corner of her eye, always, and it’s good, this. Time has softened a lot of things, a lot of problems, a lot of hurts, so even Varric and Aveline are here. It reminds her of the days when their merriment filled the Hanged Man amidst the jangling of coin and clatter of food platters, when their laughter and drink filled her chest with a funny but gentle kind of warmth.

If she reaches out, she can grasp Bethany’s hand, hook her foot at Carver’s ankle, lean back against Sebastian. He’s so steady and broad and _there_ when she loses her senses to the warmth and blurriness.

If she waits, she can see Anders in the corner, slumped over the counter, snoring softly, and Hawke watching at his side with a smile on his face. Hawke is always watching all of them, their leader and defender, even after the world tried to end on them over and over again. 

It’s been a long road.

When she was small, her clan took her on a long, difficult road to a place called Arlathvhen. Oh, Keeper Marethari… _it still stings after all this time_...but yes, she said it was an event, not a place. But Merrill always felt it was a temporal place, transient, ephemeral.  

She remembers it was beautiful.

At Arlathvhen, her parents let her hands go for the last time and her clan walked away. In her mind, they’re always walking away. There’s a small hollow of distant sadness in her throat as she tries to remember them any other way. She can’t.

She remembers crying. Oh Mythal but she cried so much. She might have been equal parts tears and coveted magic by that point. And then he took her hand. He hugged her and took her hand and loved her without hesitation.

Mahariel was smaller and brighter back then and yet so _big_ ; he’s always big in that memory, the most important thing in it. _Thank you for coming. We’ll take care of you here and make you happy, I promise._

It wasn’t years later that she made that same promise, _thank you for going. I’ll take care of them and make them happy, I promise. Just—_

She has done so many things in her life that she regrets. She gained the apprenticeship, and lost it, and then destroyed even what she didn’t have. What happened in Kirkwall, on Sundermount, to her clan and her mirror and her promise, she can’t even begin to fathom trying to make up for. How could she?

_I wanted to make things better. I wanted to make their loss right, our loss, my loss. Whose loss?_

The mirror was never going to bring them back, but perhaps it would make things...make sense, so that losing them meant something. The price was just so much steeper than she had calculated, and the coin had come out of everyone else’s pocket in the end.

Even the hurt has changed, softened, like a healing bruise or break. She should have expected it, honestly; she was never a healer like Anders. Never soft and gentle and nurturing like Mahariel. His pretty hands in hers, struggling to bring forth magic, but he could do what she couldn’t. She should have waited, but she wanted to see the clan heal, like Anders wanted to see the mages heal. In a manner of speaking. It’s so hard to get people to understand what she means to say. It’s so hard to believe that anyone can do terrible things. It’s so hard to believe that those things might be forgiven.

Bethany squeezes her hand, and Carver gets a bold yet sweet little glow in his eyes, and Merrill knows she’s been thinking for too long. She has a tendency to do that; it started when she was small and kept for separate lessons instead of with the other children. She’s always been too quiet and too talkative, and she doesn’t know how to be anything else. 

Hawke takes her hand and guides her up, and she lets him amidst urgent whispers of _now? Is it now?_ and _Tiggy, hurry up!_ She giggles at the nickname, and he smiles in exasperation and leads her outside to a cool breeze and the smell of salt air at night.

 _I wanted to surprise you,_ Hawke says, leaning against the railing, studying the moon in its place in the inky sky. _But the message never came through until now._

Puzzled, she finds herself listening, beyond the muffled crashing of the sea below, and then follows Hawke’s gaze out toward the distant shore.

 _You_.

They nod, and she doesn’t know that there are words for this anymore, if there ever were. The clan is years splintered and vanished, headed for places out of her reach now. They know, of course; she wrote and then avoided her correspondence for years, and if they reached out to her or the clan...well, they must know now.

And yet their weapons aren’t drawn at all.

 _This might not be real,_ she thinks to herself. She’s had a bad habit of imagining, of dreaming and striving for the best possible thing despite reality. _First of all, who could believe Sebastian and Anders reconciled after Kirkwall? How did Carver and Bethany survive all that the world tried to take from Hawke? And in what world…_

Mahariel smiles at her, and Tamlen follows suit, and in the space of breaths she finds herself ankle deep in the tide, never mind the water lapping at her feet because this isn’t real, she’s dreaming, she’s dreaming, she’s—

He catches her in his arms and spins her, the world a whirlwind of colors and feelings, and then her feet are on sand and shore again and they’re wrapped around her and she’s sobbing harder than she thought possible. He was always so big in her memory, pretty little Mahariel, with grinning, gleaming Tamlen a flash of yellow, of mischief, of delight. But now they really _have_ grown, tall and broad and strong, and she finds herself filled with every question and thought in the world and none at all. She breathes in as deeply as she can, and takes in the scent of earth and sun, cool and warm, the blood beneath it, everything that has changed and stayed the same. She loses herself in them, weeping like the little girl whose clan always walked away, and they say thank you for coming, _we’ll take care of you here and make you happy, I promise_ and it’s good, this.

Merrill smiles through her tears. It’s good.

  



End file.
